We had a ball in New Orleans aka Nawlins! For real!!!! I am so glad I did NOT know about Nawlins as a young adult because I would probably still be there drunk somewhere laying in the gutter. OMG !! That is THEE place to go for drinking. EVERYBODY in the streets is drunk by 7 pm. They close the street off because drunk people are all over the streets. It does not have to be any festivities going on, either. They are drinking just because they can. After this experience I think I no longer care to run after festivals. Not a bad experience but a new awareness of my own mobility issues and lack of tolerance of all the noise, pushy and shoving.
Ok, so I found a Black tour company before I left California. I was so proud of this young man Mr. Edward Hogan, aka Eddie. He is 40 year old. He had worked with other tour companies and just last year he took the giant step to start his own tour company; thus, Legendary Tours. If you use him make sure to tell him Marsha Jackson referred him. Anyway, I told him what I wanted to do. He made suggestions and he set it up with some discounts.
So, first we went to Whitney Plantation – the slave plantation museum. I was extremely apprehensive about going. I had seen videos about it on Face Book and YouTube. I felt if I had seen some Black folks hanging from trees I would come out of there shooting and killing up some white people. That did not happen. So, day 1 Legendary Tours picked us up in a Mercedes SUV. Impressive! The plantation is about 1.5 hours away from Nawlins. I was pleasantly surprised. The curator was a well educated Black man, Kone (Konah). The plantation was actually downsized for the purpose of walking. It is several acres in area. We weren’t doing that much walking. We saw “the Big House” and the slave quarters. The amazing thing for me was as a child driving through Texas and Arkansas I say the equivalent to slave quarters and never put it into perspective until I saw these slave quarters. As a matter of fact, as late as 2004 I saw some of the same type housing, once again, driving through Arkansas. Anyway, the kitchen for the Big House was a lil shack within steps of the Big House. AND, it is still functional, today. Kona explained that some of the schools use the premises for events and they actually use the ole kitchen with wood burning stove. The weather was HOT. Now imagine the kitchen had to stay ready 24 hours a day and the kitchen slaves lived ‘above’ the kitchen. OMG! talk about hot.
We went into a church where there were life size sculptures of slave children. Woodrow Nash, a Black artist, was contracted to do these sculptures. There had been sculptures of run a way slaves’ heads on poles in the pond but, they had taken those down. When asked why, I was told because it was too devastating for children. Duh, and so what? Maybe that was best because that may have incited me to act out. lol
There were few shade trees. There were water spritzers in various places but not nearly enough. Remember the Viet Nam Memorial Wall? Well, there are Slave Memorial Walls on the plantation. Over 365 slaves that had been on this plantation. They had their names, where they were from ( mostly Senegal and The Gambia). They had their birth dates, if they knew them, their date of death, excerpts of interviews of slaves and pictures of slaves all ingrained in the walls. Totally fascinating. They really needed some shade and/or spritzers in and around the walls. It was just too hot to stay reading all the names.
I asked Kona how many Black people come to see this and he said only about 1% of the visitors are Black and most of the whites are non-US citizens. I understand. My first thought before seeing it was I have been Black ALL my life. I know slavery, modern day slavery. I know of my great grand parents being slaves. I don’t need to see this madness. It hurts. It’s messed up. I was NOT wanting to see this and my friends encouraged me. It’s our history. This plantation tells of slave life. We were told about ‘Anna.’ As we were looking at the wall Kona asked someone, anyone, to point out who they would like to know. ‘Anna’ was selected. Kona spoke of the atrocities done to Anna and her siblings and how it was carried out on a daily basis. Hard to take BUT, since McGraw Hill (educational book publisher) already is changing history to say we came over as indentured slaves – just looking for work, we need to support keeping this part of history alive. This is in their World Geography book in Pearland, Texas. So, they are trying to say slavery didn’t exist – get over it. LAWD, have mercy.
This tour was about 2 hours long. There were books, periodicals and, of course, doo dad souvenirs. They had a fantastic wall hanging of the the map of Africa with the slave routes to New Orleans. I wish they had that for sale. Upon our leaving Mr. John Cummings, the owner of the plantation drove up. I took the opportunity to speak with him and his wife. We exchanged cards. I will be in touch with him with my feedback. I think it’s a good thing AND he should put the heads on the poles back. Who cares if that sight is ‘hard on the children.’ It’s part of history. He should show more atrocities for they can be good and sick of what was done to another human being.
I recommend touring this plantation. More later – plantantion #2.
